Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are not opposing the Bill. We recognise the important role that approved housing bodies have in delivering housing in many parts of the country, not least when it comes to affordable rent. The reality, however, in the Minister of State's county, County Mayo, as well as in counties Leitrim and Sligo, not one affordable house has been built under this Government, and that is a problem. The previous speaker spoke about County Carlow and I understand it is the same there. In vast areas of the regions outside of our major cities, there are no affordable houses for people, and that is a huge crisis for many families. As the previous speaker said, many people are in the locked-in position whereby they do not have enough income to be able to buy a house on the inflated markets that now exist, yet they are above the limits set by local authorities to get onto their lists or to get assistance through HAP or anything else. They are trapped in the middle and there is nothing they can do. A lot of them are young professionals. We send them to college, spend a lot of money educating them and get them decent jobs, but they find they cannot have a chance of buying a house, having an income or having a future in Ireland, so they head for Australia, Canada or somewhere else.

That is the story of many families throughout the country, whether they support the Government or the Opposition. They are all in the same boat here. It is totally intolerable that one of the wealthiest countries in the world cannot come up with solutions to house its own people. If there is anything we can do to bring home to the Government the level of desperation and frustration out there among the general public, it simply has to sit up and listen. Thousands and thousands of our people are asking what they are going to do and what hope they have for the future if they cannot have or buy a home. If they cannot buy a home, the main reason is that they cannot afford one at the inflated prices, and if they are renting, their rent is so high that they cannot save for a deposit even if they could hope to get a mortgage in the future.

This is not just a crisis in our urban areas. It is a crisis throughout the country, and the Government needs to recognise that. It simply has to come up with solutions that will provide for that. Part of those solutions relates to the approved housing bodies, and they have a role to play as do other agencies and our local authorities. One of the issues that has been pointed out time and again is that our local authorities are all the time hamstrung with rules and regulations and with the absence of funding to be able to deliver the numbers of local authority houses they need to deliver, but also to deliver houses in the cost-rental and affordable sector, which they do not do. We do not have that in the west. In the north west, not one affordable house has been delivered. That has to be an indictment of the Ministers and Government TDs who have come in here and supported the Government for the past four and a half years. Despite doing that, they are going to go back to the people and tell them that everything is rosy in the garden and that they should vote for them again and put them back in government, when not even one affordable house in counties Leitrim, Sligo or Mayo has been delivered by this Government.

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